Tribhuvan University's four-year bachelor's programme likely fiasco

2014-04-05

Ekantipur

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The Tribhuvan University (TU) plan to launch four-year bachelor’s programmes in the academic session starting June is unlikely to be implemented as the task of developing new curricula has not yet started.

With the university’s failure to prepare the new course and textbooks, which is a major part of the project, its plan to upgrade the level is set to prolong by another year. Aiming to adopt it within a year in order to meet the international standard, TU in July had expedited groundwork forming a high-level committee led by Keshav Kumar Shrestha, chief of Curriculum Development Centre.

Shrestha’s committee prepared a report after a feasibility study and submitted the same to the university academic board recommending the formation of a curriculum development committee.

“Though it is two months since we submitted our report, there has not been any remarkable progress,” Shrestha said. “This shows it will be not be possible to launch the new programme in the set time.” His committee concluded that the launching of the new programme was possible in the present situation as the human resource and the infrastructure used by the phased-out Proficiency Certificate Level could be utilised for it.

TU has planned to endorse four-year programmes in non-technical faculties while all of its technical courses are either four- or five-year.

It had upgraded the two-year bachelor’s programme to three-years 1992. As most universities in the world are running four-year programmes, Nepali students opting for higher studies abroad have been facing problems due to the lack of required credit hours.